Preface

This manual describes how to build portlets for Oracle Application Server Portal (OracleAS Portal) using a variety of tools and technologies. This manual includes information that helps you understand the various technology choices open to you, choose the technology that best meets your requirements, and use the appropriate tools to build and deploy your portlets.

Intended Audience

This manual is intended primarily for portal developers, but page designers may also find it useful. This manual guides you through the process of first understanding and choosing a portlet technology, and then building your portlets with that technology.

What Is a Portal Developer? A portal developer is a user who writes code to help make a portal meet the specific requirements of an organization. For example, a portal developer may build portlets and make them available to page designers and other users for inclusion on their pages. This type of portal developer is also referred to as a portlet developer. A portal developer may also use the public APIs provided with OracleAS Portal to perform certain portal tasks programmatically, rather than through the product's user interface. A portal developer will generally, although not always, be someone with at least some programming knowledge. The privileges assigned to a portal developer depend on the type of tasks that developer performs.

Note: Examples of how to use APIs to perform content management tasks will be provided soon on Portal Center (http://portalcenter.oracle.com) and will be incorporated into a later release of this guide.

What Is a Portlet Developer? A portlet developer is a user with the following global privileges: Create All Portal DB Providers and Manage All Shared Components. Since OracleAS Portal offers such a wide spectrum of tools and technologies for building portlets, a portlet developer may or may not have substantial programming background.

What Is a Page Designer? A page designer, also known as a page manager, is a user with the Manage privilege on a page. A user with this privilege can perform any action on the page and can create sub-pages under the page. The page designer is often responsible for designing the layout (or region configuration) of the page and assigning privileges on the page to other users (for example, to determine who can add content to the page).

The scope of a page designer's control over a page may be limited if the page is based on a template.

For information about the different privileges in OracleAS Portal and how these affect the tasks you can perform, see the Oracle Application Server Portal User's Guide on the OracleAS Portal Documentation page on OTN (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/portal/documentation.html).

Note: For the portable document format (PDF) version of this manual, when a URL breaks onto two lines, the full URL data is not sent to the browser when you click it. To get to the correct target of any URL included in the PDF, copy and paste the URL into your browser's address field. In the HTML version of this manual, you can click a link to directly display its target in your browser.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Related Documents

For more information, see the following manuals in the OracleAS Portal documentation set:

• Oracle Application Server Portal Release Notes

• Oracle Application Server Portal User's Guide

• Oracle Application Server Portal Configuration Guide

• Oracle Application Server Portal Error Messages Guide

Note: You can find all documentation related to OracleAS Portal on the OracleAS Portal Documentation page on OTN (http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/portal/documentation.html)

You may also find the following manuals in the Oracle Application Server documentation set useful:

• Oracle Application Server Concepts

• Oracle HTTP Server Administrator's Guide

• Oracle Application Server Web Cache Administrator's Guide

• Oracle Application Server Web Toolkit Reference

Note: You can find documentation related to Oracle Application Server on OTN (http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/index.html).

Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Convention	Meaning
boldface	Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.
italic	Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.
monospace	Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.
< >	Angle brackets enclose user-supplied names.
[ ]	Brackets enclose optional clauses from which you can choose one or none.
...	Ellipsis points in an example mean that information not directly related to the example has been omitted.
ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the Oracle home, and is used where it is easy to determine which Oracle home is referenced.
MID_TIER_ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the middle-tier Oracle home, and is used where it is necessary to distinguish between the middle tier, Oracle Application Server Infrastructure, or Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository.
INFRA_ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the Oracle Application Server Infrastructure Oracle home, and is used where it is necessary to distinguish between the middle tier, Oracle Application Server Infrastructure, or Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository.
METADATA_REP_ORACLE_HOME	Represents the full path of the OracleAS Infrastructure home containing the Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository, and is used where it is necessary to distinguish between the middle tier, Oracle Application Server Infrastructure, or Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository.

Browser Recommendations

Use one of the following Web browsers with OracleAS Portal:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

• Netscape 7.2

• Mozilla 1.7

• Firefox 1.0

• Safari 1.2

You may encounter JavaScript errors if you use a browser older than the recommended minimum.

Cache Settings

Your browser's default settings are sufficient for displaying valid portal content. If those defaults have been altered, you should check that their values do not inadvertently disable valuable cache capabilities. To check your browser's cache settings, perform the following steps:

In Internet Explorer:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options.

2. Click the General tab to bring it forward.

3. In the Temporary Internet File section, click the Settings button.

4. In the Check for newer versions of stored pages radio group, select Automatically.

   This is the default option. You can also select Every visit to the page or Every time you start Internet Explorer.

   
   

   Note: Do not select Never. Selecting Never means the browser will never check for newer versions of stored pages, and the cache will never be updated.

   
   

5. Click OK.

6. Click OK.

In Netscape/Mozilla:

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.

2. Expand the Advanced node.

3. Click Cache.

4. In the Document in cache is compared to document on network radio group, select When page is out of date.

   This is the default setting. You can also select Every time I view the page or Once per session.

   
   

   Note: Do not select Never. Selecting Never means the browser will never check for newer versions of stored pages, and the cache will never be updated.

   
   

5. Click OK.

Image Settings

Sometimes the browser setting that controls the automatic loading of images is disabled to increase performance on low bandwidth connections. A problem that commonly occurs when images are not loaded automatically is that, once logged out, you cannot log in again without closing and re-invoking the browser. To avoid this problem, make sure images are loaded automatically.

To ensure that images are loaded automatically:

In Internet Explorer:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options.

2. Click the Advanced tab to bring it forward.

3. Scroll through the list of options to the Multimedia node, and select Show Pictures.

4. Click OK.

In Netscape:

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.

2. Click Advanced.

3. Select the Automatically load images check box.

4. Click OK.